Free Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta Page A

Jesus,” he whimpered. “Why did I do that?”
    So there we were. Full count, bases loaded, two out. Championship game. A score of 1–0. Th e whole season narrowing down to a single pitch. If the circumstances had been a little di ff erent, it would have been a beautiful moment, an umpire’s dream.
    But for me, the game barely existed. All I could think of just then was the smile on Happy Chang’s dirty face as the cops led him o ff the fi eld. I was kneeling on the ground trying to comfort Lori when Happy turned in our direction and said something low and gentle in Chinese, maybe asking if she was all right or telling her not to worry. Lori said something back, maybe that she was fi ne or that she loved him.
    “Easy now,” Santelli called from the dugout. “Right down the middle.”
    Lori tugged her shirt down in back and squinted at the catcher. Mark Diedrich’s face was beet red, as if something terribly embarrassing had already happened.
    “Please, God,” I heard him mutter as Lori began her windup.
    I should have been watching the ball, but instead I was thinking about Happy Chang and everything he must have been going through at the police station, the fi ngerprinting, the mug shot, the tiny holding cell. But mainly it was the look on his face that haunted me, the proud and de fi ant smile of a man at peace with what he’d done and willing to accept the consequences.
    Th e ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt, waking me from my reverie. Mark hadn’t swung. As far as I could determine a ft er the fact, the pitch appeared to have crossed the plate near the outside corner, though possibly a bit on the high side.
    I guess I could have lied. I could have called strike three and given the game to the Ravens, to Lori Chang and Ray Santelli. I could have sent Mark Diedrich sobbing back to the dugout, probably scarred for life. But instead I pulled o ff my mask.
    “Jack?” Tim was standing between fi rst and second with his palms open to the sky. “You gonna call it?”
    “I can’t,” I told him. “I didn’t see it.”
    Th ere was a freedom in admitting it that I hadn’t anticipated, and I dropped my mask to the ground. Th en I slipped my arms through the straps of my chest protector and let that fall, too.
    “What happened?” Mark Diedrich asked in a quavery voice. “Did I strike out?”
    “I don’t know,” I told him.
    Boos and angry cries rose from the bleachers as I made my way toward the pitcher’s mound. I wanted to tell Lori Chang that I envied her father, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t understand. She seemed relieved when I walked past her without saying a word. Mikey Fellner was out of the dugout and videotaping me as I walked past second base and onto the grass. He followed me all the way across center fi eld, until I climbed the fence over the ad for the Prima Ballerina School of Dance and le ft the ballpark.
    Th at’s what I wanted my ex-wife and children to see — an umpire walking away from a baseball game, a man who had the courage to admit that he’d failed, who understood that there were times when you had no right to judge, had responsibilities you were no longer quali fi ed to exercise. I hoped they might learn something new about me, something I hadn’t been able to make clear to them in my letters and phone calls.
    But of course I was disappointed. What’s in your heart sometimes remains hidden, even when you most desperately want it to be revealed. I remembered my long walk across the out fi eld as a digni fi ed, silent journey, but on TV I seem almost to be jogging. I look sweaty and confused, a little out of breath as I mumble a string of barely audible excuses and apologies for my strange behavior. If Jeanie and the kids had been watching, all they would have seen was an unhappy man they already knew too well, fl eeing from the latest mess he’d made: just me, still trying to explain.

KIDDIE POOL
    IN A LIGHT RAIN, AT A LITTLE AFTER THREE IN THE morning, Gus